Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Marketing 102

If you missed my blog on Marketing 101 (for Barry Manilow), here's the link: Marketing 101

It was recently brought to my attention that the prices for the tickets are perhaps not driven by Camp Manilow, but rather driven by the promoters. In other words, Camp Manilow may not determining the prices of tickets, particularly with the upcoming Atlantic City and O2 (in England) shows.

So, what do you do when you can't control the price of your end product? How do you market for that? Well, you can play the victim, but that will only get you so far for so long. The trick is, you get creative.

In this economy, more and more people are looking for value for the money they are spending. If you can't lower the ticket prices, offer gift incentives for purchasing the higher priced tickets.

The Paris L.V. has a start with the marketing by trying to turn their concert to see Barry into an "experience". They are including a hotel room, tickets to the show and perhaps a meal at one of their restaurants to entice people to spend the money and come.

Perhaps, for those not purchasing that particular experience, Camp Manilow could look to how they could "plus" the experience for people purchasing the more expensive tickets.

There is already a package deal, for the balcony seats, that includes champagne. How well is that selling? I guess people who don't drink alcohol are out of luck with that marketing strategy. LOL.

In case you are wondering where the term "plus" comes from, it was a term used by Walt Disney when making his animated movies, later live action movies and later still Disneyland. He always looked for a way to "plus" something to give it that extra wow factor. And make it a wow factor that will appeal to everyone in the audience (in other words, no b-strings, please. :) ).

A few ideas:

For those in the bottom $200 + rows they receive, in their seat, a gift bag with a few items that are actually useful at home and not just something that will collect dust. I know, some of you love ANYTHING Barry, but I have enough baubles to last a lifetime. It doesn't have to have a lot in it but here are a few items I came up with:

1. A reusable flash drive with pictures and music from Barry's vault.
2. A certificate redeemable at the M store for a free shirt of their choice, up to a $50 value.
3. A certificate redeemable online for a free 1 year membership to BMIFC, or free renewal for those who are already members.
4. A note from Barry, thanking people for sticking with him during the rough economy.

For those in the champagne seating, a gift bag, like above, containing:

1. A reusable flash drive with pictures, music from Barry's vault..
2. A certificate redeemable at the M store for a free shirt of their choice, no limit on the value.
3. A certificate redeemable online for a free 2 year membership to BMIFC, or free 2 year renewal for those who are already members.
4. A note from Barry, thanking people for sticking with him during the rough economy.
5. An LED keychain light with Manilow on one side and a champagne flute on the other.

And just to really "plus" it, both seating areas will remain in the theater after the show (they will be advised this by the theater ushers) and once everyone else has cleared the room, Barry will come out in his tux and perform one last song for his special "experience" audience members. Perhaps even take a few questions from the audience, if he's feeling up to it.

This is just an idea of what could be done, I'm sure Barry has more clever minds than this to come up with something better.

This also only covers shows at The Paris L.V., but as I just said, I'm sure something could be worked out for the shows in Atlantic City and O2.

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